The captain and her company transported me across the ruined ground, occasional sounds of radio buzzing and muffled voices quietly reaching my ears. As we passed through the shadows of the ruins of two large skyscrapers, the captain held a finger over her lips, warning me to stay silent. I would’ve nodded to indicate my understanding, but the brace kept my head firmly locked to the stretcher.

To be honest with you, I wasn’t exactly sure what the troop was afraid of, but I could only assume it was related to the Scourge I’d read about. The book kept rather vague with the details, but I’d managed to put together a little picture of them in my mind.

From what I could understand, the Scourge was something of a hivemind. It spread and corrupted the people of this world, called Semma, turning them into… whatever the heck the Scourge looked like. I pictured monsters dripping with goo as they dissolved and lost their original shapes, joining the hivemind.

But it was also entirely possible that they maintained their original bodies, and were simply controlled. I just couldn’t ask, though, because almost everyone on Semma was expected to know at least a little about the Scourge. Enough that if they encountered it, they should know to run.

And just asking “Hey, could you maybe describe to me what the biggest threat to sentient life looks like? Obviously, I’m old enough to have been around for the past seventeen months, but… y’know, I just never really got around to learning about it.” Well, it seemed like a bad idea.

So instead, I had to play along until I could find maybe a library or something to read about it.

I slept for a while, at some point waking and feeling like I could take on Dick. Lia returned to my side. “It’s safe to talk now, my lord,” she said quietly. “But I would recommend waiting until we’re on the ship.”

Ooh? The ship?

“Okay but,” I said, clearing my throat again. She uncapped a canteen and poured some water into my mouth. I smiled gratefully. “Thanks. Do I have to be on the stretcher?”

She didn’t explain why I did, simply stating, “Protocol demands it.”

I sighed.

After another few minutes, I could hear the low rumble of an engine idling. Laying strapped on the stretcher was driving me nuts. I was so bored and all I could see were the buildings around me. But as the engine drew nearer, I could hear the soldiers start running around. Some were carrying rolls of cloth and others rope. I imagined they were packing up their current base.

A couple of younger women jogged over, saluting the captain and glancing down at me. The one with three bars on her breast, one more than her friend, gasped. I wasn’t exactly sure about what. She had her blonde hair in a braid, and it hung loosely over her left shoulder. Though she was slim, her face was gorgeous, rivaling even the captain’s. Her compatriot drew my attention immediately, however. Suffice to say… this one was stacked. She was also blonde, but had opted to keep her own hair in a bun. A pair of glasses rested on her chest, strung to a necklace presumably to hang around her neck. The uniforms the two wore were much the same as Lia’s, but instead of a beret, they both wore headbands, tied tight to their foreheads and depicting a green circle on a white background.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“What is it, Mila?” the captain addressed the slimmer girl.

“Oh, um, well,” she blushed, glancing down at me again. Or… Maybe she wasn’t looking at me? We definitely didn’t make eye contact. “Normus sent us to do the inspection…”

The captain rolled her eyes, a hand resting on her blaster’s holster. I could only imagine that it was probably a habit from being in hostile environments, not an intimidation tactic. “Very well. Is he cleared?”

The girls eyed me, and the unnamed one prodded me with some metal pole attached to a box. It tingled. Mila poked me with a finger, pressing on my ribs and asking if I felt any pain, while the other girl just stood there, reading numbers off the box. When I didn’t she squeezed the same places and asked again.

I kept saying “No, no pain” until eventually, she was at my ankles. Though it seemed like she’d spent extra time near a certain area, I couldn’t be sure.

“Well?” the captain asked impatiently.

“Oh! All clear, captain!” Mila responded.

“Good.”

The stretcher started moving again as Lia walked beside me, grumbling something about newbies and her head. As we rolled into the distance, I could hear the two girls gossiping.

“Did you see the size?”

“Yes! But you have to stay professional around your superiors, Mila! But yes I saw it…”

“Oh, I hope he’s--”

Their voices vanished as the engines of the ship kicked on, and the stretcher was raised. After we’d rolled into the ship, Lia looked me over once more.

“Well,” she said apprehensively. “They cleared you, so you’re good to go.”

Though she removed the straps locking me to the stretcher, I could tell by how she said the word ‘they’ that Mila and her friend weren’t necessarily well-received, and she probably doubted their assessment.

I was led by two of the captain’s squadron, a couple of very large men with faces that warned me not to mess with them, through the ship, up two small sets of stairs, and into a large lavishly decorated chamber. A small table stretched through the center of the room, with gilded chairs on either side. A candelabra bolted into the center burned with blue flames, and the light flickered across large paintings of military men on the walls. My inner prankster cried as I realized that I might never get to pull any pranks again. This world just seemed too serious for it.

The soldiers left me, one of them telling me to make myself comfortable on his way out, and I threw myself onto a plush couch, finding it to be just as comfortable as it looked and passing out once more, with dreams of two blonde military medic babes dancing in my heads.